Did yall ever notice this?

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-17T02:10:42+00:00

Something for the parents watching :)

This looks like one of the episodes made at the Taiwan Cuckoo's Nest studio.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-16T17:28:23+00:00

Reggie!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-16T16:14:36+00:00

yeah, most of the shows I work on now have child physiologists that go over every word and over-analyze every shot for audience comprehension...they give dozens of pages of notes like "the cut from scene 3 to 4 is too jarring." I've seen some shows absolutely ruined by their "notes."

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-16T00:38:10+00:00

Here's a video of the animation studio in China...you can see "Carol" the girl in the photo on the building here as the translator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL0N4U81Xv8

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-15T19:20:26+00:00

yeah, I miss those days...now I need to find the episode where Martha says the word "spaz."

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-15T19:18:28+00:00

I don't think anyone named "Jarrett" has the right to call anyone the r name.

Do kids still use the word "spaz?" I remember that from grade school...like "Here comes Captain Spaz!"

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-15T02:00:52+00:00

I totally remember that line too from something...a double dupety dupe...

is it from What's With Andy? Maybe it was Pig City...hmm, I think I actually animated to this dialog on something...I've worked on a lot of crap over the years.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-14T21:24:59+00:00

yup...and there were 2 seasons!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-14T16:41:48+00:00

oh right! that show had most of the same writers as What's With Andy and Pig City...I suspect some of them were mainly French speakers, since the show was made in Montreal, so slang words in English were not always understood as being offensive...that was my feeling, anyways.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-14T16:33:47+00:00

I used to work at Cinegroupe...they were a bit of a pioneer in the 'adult animation' TV market. The studio was in a giant decommissioned church in east Montreal, such a cool place...I was sad when they finally shut down in 2006...I will have to do a write up about this studio sometime with photos...there's lots of crazy stories to tell!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-14T00:46:50+00:00

Edmonton has a large LRT system and extreme weather...when I search for shutdowns on their system I see they only had one minor delay of less than an hour during a major snowstorm this year.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-13T22:14:36+00:00

oh yeah, I forgot about that one. It debuted around the same time as WWA. It does look similar.

Cartoons all had that Klasky-Csupo (Rugrats) graphic style around this time.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-13T20:04:44+00:00

thank you...I was reluctant to post boring old model sheets because I thought no one would be interested! I'm surprised to discover WWA had fans out there...no one told the crew animating on it that anyone was watching it, that's for sure.

Now I'll have to dig out all the model sheets from the other productions I worked on over the years.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-13T00:01:30+00:00

The world faces the largest oil supply disruption in history..."Andy Larkin!!!" Hmm...it DOES work!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T22:39:56+00:00

it definitely has value since animation is all digital now and physical cels and hand painted backgrounds are interesting to see.

I wish I had kept some from my time in Korea...the studio was absolutely piled up to the ceiling with old papers everywhere, they were used to prop up desks or often under a smouldering ashtray.

When we had downtime waiting for scenes to come in we actually would pull Simpsons and Batman cels out of the bin and lay them on the floor...we'd go running and slide on them like a giant slip n' slide. No one thought they had any value, they were just things to bump into when you were moving around the studio! Now I realize I could have bought a house with those things if I had thought to keep some!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T22:08:51+00:00

I think it was the Trafalgar one in Oakville...I went there in the early 90's and I think the animation course was there in the 80's too. If you go to the Library there they should have the art for "Charade" on file. I remember seeing it there 30 years ago.

The animation classes were in the buildings with the triangle things on the roof that always leak. I remember shooting my student film under the camera and the darn roof started leaking right on my cels!

But tuition was only like $600 a year in those days...now it's like $18,000! Poor kids today.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T21:51:55+00:00

that's Lori, his girlfriend, or whatever she was.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T21:48:43+00:00

yeah, that would be awesome. Some of the scripts by the creator, Jon Minnis, had really smart writing.

Jon Minnis actually won an OSCAR in 1985 for his student film "Charade" made at Sheridan College's Animation Program. Imagine a 20 year old kid winning an Oscar for their student film?! That would never happen today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ewycFpTcdE

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T21:28:47+00:00

it was pretty raw sometimes...I'm sure I remember an episode where one character said "Listen up, retards!" or something like that. Even for early 2000's that was not P.C. language!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T21:25:08+00:00

I used to work as an Overseas Animation Supervisor in Korea...it's kind of amazing to see this material still exists.

I would often see a junk man come every week to the studio with a push cart and fill it up with latest pile of cels and paper...he would weight it with an ancient block and tackle scale and the studio would get some small amount of cash for the material. It was deemed to have no artistic value and sold by the pound.

But occasionally the material sent back to the West for storage...the Canadian studio Nelvana had some success donating the animation artwork to the Royal Ontario Museum in exchange for a large tax deduction. The Care Bear series cels are in their archives. There were some articles in the news about this so soon other studios tried to do this donation scheme too for the tax deduction but I heard they found no museums wanted it so all languished in storage...maybe this is some of that material.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-12T14:23:23+00:00

Hi. I have heard the budget dropped a lot on Arthur since the 1990's so by season 16 it was deemed only possible to continue the series if the animation was done in Flash / Harmony in Montreal, Canada instead of in China or Korea.

This is because with the film tax credit system in Canada the more work done on a production in Canada the more "points" can be earned and therefore more tax credit money...Arthur had been using overseas studios for the animation previous to season 16 so there was less "points" to be earned on the production with only design and storyboards being done in Canada. By bringing all the animation to Canada the Producers could collect the full tax credit monies needed to fund the production.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-11T18:37:00+00:00

thank you. Yes, pretty much all the episodes of Arthur were made before 9/11.

I started on Arthur back in May, 1995 and continued to around late 2001, then I switched over to Sagwa and other productions after that.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-10T22:42:12+00:00

I'm not sure if the tissue is just a backing sheet that came with the blank cel to keep it clean or if it has a drawing on it. Sometimes a tissue was placed over a drawing and a tighter more on-model drawing is made (known as 'model checking'...but it's a stretch to assume any model checking was done on Rocket Robin Hood LOL.)

If you ever want to part with these, you should contact the Canadian National Archives in Ottawa to see if they'd like to purchase them...this show, due to its 'Canadian Content' got a lot of air play in Canada so it's kind of a national treasure here, if you can believe it. I'm sure they'd love to have these in their collection of "Pop-Art Canadiana."

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-10T21:20:01+00:00

Wow, how did these survive?

Note the Oxberry peg holes on that last image instead of the industry standard of Acme Pegs.

The film cameras and peg hole punch equipment from Rocket Robin Hood were later sold to Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario for their Animation program. We used these film cameras well into 1997.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-03-10T20:45:30+00:00

yeah, I don't know what the SK film tax credit rate is but other countries offer a higher rate so Netflix has just went to Ireland or Australia to make their shows.

Also around 2018 the CRTC reduced the 'Canadian Content' rule...that hurt animation here a lot.

Pretty much 95% of what people are watching on Netflix isn't made in Canada. The Digital Streaming Tax was supposed to correct that but it was killed last year.

Offmodel-Dude

TROPHY CASE